


Bug Boy

by scheidswrites



Category: Unspecified Fandom
Genre: Max's Haunted Palace 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27157969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scheidswrites/pseuds/scheidswrites
Summary: Oct 25 Prompt: "Nah, I don't get scared."
Kudos: 2
Collections: Max's Haunted Palace 2020





	Bug Boy

Noah’s parents swore that, as soon as he started to crawl, he was headed straight for any sharp object, electrical outlet, or hot pan handle in sight. They safety-proofed the house as well as they could, but he always seemed to stumble upon some new risk they hadn’t anticipated.  


As a toddler he was great at climbing to precarious heights. Even when he fell he seemed unfazed, game to try it again. He terrorized his parents when he learned to walk and run. They were constantly yanking him back from busy roads, growling dogs, fires, and steep edges. “That boy knows no fear!” his relatives laughed, many sets of eyes on him and his cousins as they played, and his mother topping off her wine glass.  


In school he chased the other students around with bugs, laughing at their squeals when they saw the spider or centipede in his hands. They started calling him Bug Boy, and he loved it. “Eww! Get it away, that’s scary!” cried a classmate whom he had cornered on the playground.  


“Why?” he asked. But then the teacher blew the whistle announcing the end of recess, the classmate scampered away, and when he opened his hand he saw that he had accidentally crushed the spider.  


In fourth grade, Noah read a book of fairy tales. One story was of a boy who Went Forth to learn fear. The boy, who wanted to learn how to “shudder with fear,” was rejected by loved ones, breezed through trials that had stymied all others, and ended the story as a wealthy man married to a princess. Noah read the story, then read it again. Not being afraid. It was like a superpower.  


As a teenager, people called on him to do the things that scared everyone else. Crawling under the porch to chase out the raccoons, catching the bug or mouse, investigating the noise outside. He did it all, and he enjoyed feeling useful. But he noticed that it didn’t seem to make them like him. They were grateful to have someone catch the snake, crawl under the porch, ask the question everyone else was too scared to ask. But they would look at him with this _look_ , as he scrambled out of the crawlspace with leaves and cobwebs in his hair, as he held a snake or a mouse thrashing in his hands. This look which did not seem friendly but which he didn’t understand. “Aren’t you scared?” they would ask, and he would shrug. “Nah,” he’d reply. “I don’t get scared.”  


In junior year of high school he asked a girl on a date for the first time. They weren’t friends, but they had spoken a few times. Mostly he had watched her from afar. She was beautiful. He thought carefully about when to approach her and what he would say. He did not really think about how she might respond. So he was shocked when she said no.  
He turned and walked away, face hot. Behind him he could hear her laughing with her friends. _Bug Boy_ , he heard. _Gross!_  


Freshman year of college, he took a psychology course. He read everything he could find on sociopathy. He joined some chat rooms and discovered some like-minded people. But he always thought, deep down, that they seemed a bit phony. Not like him.  


He didn’t put nearly as much fervor into his schoolwork, and sophomore year he dropped out of school. Too much drinking, not enough studying.  
He moved back into his bedroom in his parent’s house, and found a job. His parents tried to convince him to go back to school, but eventually they stopped. He wasn’t afraid of his future without a degree. He wasn’t afraid of anything.  


The job he found was as an exterminator. It seemed perfect for him, going into the places that had scared everyone else away and killing the intruders inside. Sometimes he ran into people he’d known from school. “An exterminator!” they’d say. “I could never do that, I’d be too creeped out!” Or they’d make jokes, saying he really was Bug Boy now. He’d made it official!  


But he didn’t think that fit. He was the antithesis of bugs now. He smote every insect in a building like an avenging angel. But he didn’t say these things. Statements like that got him the look.  


He worked at that job until he was twenty-eight. He could have moved out of his parent’s home long ago, but didn’t really see the point. His attempts at dating never went anywhere so he had decided to stop trying, and so he didn’t have a new home with someone to move to.  


One day at work, they got a call to clean out an old house before the new owners started renovating. It had sat empty for a while, so who knew what had taken up residence in the nooks and crannies. He and his coworker, John, flipped a coin. John lost, so he packed up his gear and went.  


Noah sat at his own desk and scrolled idly through his phone. It was barely an hour before John burst back in the door, wide eyed. Noah knew it was a fifteen minute drive each direction. No way John cleared the whole house that fast.  
John was breathing heavily, and looked pale. “Dude. What’s wrong?” Noah asked him.  


“It wasn’t bugs,” John gasped.  


“Opossums?”  


“I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t fucking bugs and I am not going back there!” John collapsed in his chair.  


“Okay dude, Jesus. I’ll go.” Noah tugged the keys from his coworker’s hand and climbed in the company truck. John had parked it haphazardly in front of the building. Noah hoped the guy wasn’t on drugs.  


The house he arrived at was a big old thing, set slightly apart on a hill. It had probably been beautiful back in its day, but had clearly sat empty and untended for a long time. Noah wondered why, as he walked up the long driveway to the front door. A place like this was probably worth a lot of money, but you ended up sinking tons into repairs when you let a building go as badly as this one. It needed a new roof, he thought. And new windows. A good power-washing, a fresh coat of paint…  


The air inside was musty and stale. He sneezed. The floor was grimy underfoot. He scouted around. He saw mouse droppings and cobwebs. No signs of termite damage, which was good. He didn’t hear sounds of bigger critters in the walls, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.  


There was nothing of note on the ground floor or the basement. It all seemed pretty standard. The top floor still had a few pieces of furniture in it, covered in old yellowing sheets. The master bedroom had a grand four-poster bed in the center. The corner of its sheet fluttered gently when Noah opened the door.  


They’re definitely gonna have to throw this old shit out, Noah thought. But he’d check it for bedbugs and such anyway. He threw back the edge of the sheet.  


Below it the mattress seethed with insects. Millipedes, hundreds of them, crawling over one another in a dark writhing mass.  


Noah sighed. He might have to haul John back here so they could drag the mattress outside and burn it. They could chemical-bomb the hell out of it, but a mattress full of dead millipedes was still way more trouble than it was worth.  
He looked down to shake one wandering millipede off his shoe, and when he looked back up the bed was empty. Damn, those little bastards were fast. They were definitely going to recommend a full fumigation.  


He wandered into the master bathroom. There was a detached sink, a full-length mirror, and a big old-timey clawfoot tub. Inside the tub was a corpse.  


It looked fresh, almost like a man sleeping except for the open glassy eyes. His throat had been cut and he was drenched in his own drying blood. It streaked, sticky and dark, along the porcelain to the drain.  


Noah sighed again, pulling his phone out of his pocket. John could have at least stuck around and called the cops himself. “You owe me one,” he muttered as he dialed.  


The phone lurched from his grip and hit the floor. It was as though someone had smacked it from his hand, except no one was there. He bent down and picked it up. It wasn’t broken, good.  


The bathroom door slammed shut behind him. He tried the handle but it wouldn’t budge. This place might need new doors and new door frames, or at least new locks. Really it might be cheaper to just knock the building down and start over fresh. He finished dialing on his phone and held it to his ear. Error. The call dropped.  


He looked at the phone. No signal. Weird. He thought you were still able to dial the police without a signal, but it looked like that wasn’t true after all. He tried the door handle again. This time it opened easily.  


There was some sort of creature now crouched on the bed. It looked humanoid, but the limbs were too long and bent at odd angles. It turned, and locked eyes with him. It moved towards him, crawling along the edge of the bed and down the bedpost with jerky, unnatural movements. “Noah…” it said in a rasping voice.  


“Yeah, what?” Noah asked from the doorway. He was ready to slam the door shut again. He could try climbing out the window if he had to. But the thing talking was a surprise.  


It froze and cocked its head. “You don’t seem to like my surprises, Noah,” it hissed.  


“I’m just, like, trying to do my job,” he replied.  


He blinked, and the creature was gone. A woman stepped out from around the other side of the four-poster bed. She smoothed back the corner of the sheet he had flipped up, and sat herself gracefully on the edge of the bed. She patted the space next to her with a delicate hand. “Come sit with me, Noah.” Her voice was rich and friendly.  


“You gonna kill me like the guy in the tub?” he asked.  


She laughed. “There was never anyone in the tub. Now come on.”  


He turned to look. The clawfoot tub was empty. Even all the drying blood was gone. So he shrugged, and walked across the room to sit next to the woman. She was stunning, like she’d stepped out of a magazine or off a movie set. Her eyes sparkled as she looked at him with interest. He’d never had the attention of this beautiful a woman before. His face felt hot.  


“Usually my little tricks send people running in terror,” she said. “Like that friend of yours in the matching shirt.”  


“So what is this, a haunted house or something?”  


She laughed and shook her head. She had a nice laugh. Her teeth were very white. When she shook her head, a pleasant floral smell wafted from her hair. Noah thought about running his hands through it. “Tell me, Noah, why aren’t you scared of my usual work?”  


He shrugged, trying to play it cool. But he could hear the pride in his own voice. “I don’t get scared.”  


She angled her head thoughtfully. His eyes traveled down the angle of her jaw, her long neck, the delicate curve of her collarbone. A smile quirked the corners of her lips, which looked very soft. “So you’re not scared of bugs?”  


“Nope.”  


“Rats?”  


“Nope.”  


“Ghosts and demons?”  


“Those aren’t real.”  


“Being murdered in a terrible fashion?”  


“I mean, I obviously don’t want that to happen but I’m not, like, _worried_ about it.”  


"So what are you afraid of, Noah?” she asked. She leaned in close, looking intently into his eyes. He could feel the heat of her face close to his own.  


“I’m not afraid of anything,” he said. “I never have been.”  


“Everyone’s afraid of something,” she said softly. She rested her hand on his leg and he felt the touch race through him like electricity.  


“Not me. Did you ever read that fairy tale, about the kid who wants to shudder with fear and can’t? That’s me.” He kicked himself mentally, for bringing up something lame like fairy tales. Stupid.  


But the woman didn’t seem to care. Her hand moved further up his leg. “Mm, so you’d like to learn how to _shudder_?” she said, voice dripping with innuendo.  


Noah jumped to his feet, face burning, and fussed with the front of his work shirt. “Sorry, I’m not in the habit of doing anything on millipede-infested beds. Maybe we can--”  


“You’re not in the habit of doing much of anything on any beds,” she laughed. She shook her thick hair back over her shoulder.  


His face burned even more. “Hey, you don’t know shit about me. I--”  


“But I do, Noah,” she said. She leaned forward from her spot on the bed. “Now I know exactly what you’re afraid of.”  


“I _told_ you, I’m not afraid of anything.” Who did this girl even think she was?  


The flirty smile was still on her face but her eyes bored into his. “True, you’re not scared of the usual creepy crawlies or bumps in the night. But real bravery can’t exist without real fear. And your real fear is the reason your life is so pathetic.”  


The last word hit flatly, like a slap in the face. “You don’t know shit about me,” Noah said again. Rage shook his voice slightly.  


“I know you built your identity around being the one who wasn’t scared. The one who did the distasteful jobs because it made you feel like a big tough man, and you like the looks on people’s faces when you tell your big gross stories.  
Despite that, I know you’ve never taken a true risk in your life. You dropped out of school because you couldn’t be bothered to try. You gave up on dating and wrote women off as shallow bitches when your insect horror stories and lack of reciprocity drove them away.  
You diagnosed yourself as a sociopath, despite knowing full well that you don’t fit the diagnostic criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder. You know, deep down, that it’s much cooler and edgier to label yourself that way then to admit you’re just lonely.”  


“Shut up!” Noah screamed at her. Her face was all he could see, these words dripping from her beautiful lips like poison. “Shut the fuck up!”  


“You’re even too scared to accept the affection of a beautiful woman, because you’re terrified of assertive and self-directed women, terrified of intimacy, and most of all terrified that any woman close enough to you will eventually discover the truth: that deep down you are nothing. A hollow shell with no life, no true interests or passion, just a body taking up space, eating food and sitting around until you die and every single person in the world forgets you ever existed.”  


Noah rushed at her, fists clenched to knock that bitchy little smile off her face, make her shut up. But he blinked and she was across the room, standing near the bay window with the unruffled poise of a statue.  


Her smile was gently self-satisfied. “You’re so afraid of the truth that you turned this quickly to violence. Is a woman having her own ideas and opinions so horrifying to you, Noah?” She chucked. “What am I saying? I know it is.”  


“What do you want?” Noah asked. His hands hung limply at his sides. He sat on the bed with a slump.  


She crossed the room to him again. With one manicured finger she lifted his chin until his eyes met hers. “Sweetheart. I live on fear. I’m getting _exactly_ what I want.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have never done html formatting before...dear god... enjoy my labors of love. Also it's very interesting to try to write scary things in a way that doesn't convey fear


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